Tag Archives: Finland

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family

Our Wedding in Finland

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In one of the previous articles I wrote about our wedding in China and how I experienced it. Now it is time to present you our wedding in Finland!

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Last summer we had first a “little” wedding in China which was pretty much stressful experience but also at the same time very interesting. About three weeks later we had our wedding in Finland which had been planned for nearly a year by my wife. However unlike in China, we had instead of 100 guests only 50 but at least we knew each single person there! Besides it would have exceeded our financial limits to invite anybody more as Finland is not exactly known to be a cheap country.

Our guests included of course both of our parents and much of my family from Finland and Sweden. In addition my brother was flown in with his girlfriend from Germany. The tricky part was to invite our friends as we had only limited capacities which meant we couldn’t just invite everybody we know but had to be very selective. My wife invited some of her friends she knew for years in Finland and also several friends from her work place. I on the other hand invited several dudes from my swimming years in Finland, one guy from my old swimming team in Germany and last but not least my best friend from my youth who extra came from California for this event.

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The couple of days prior to the wedding were more than just stressful. The location of the wedding reception had to be prepared, people had to be picked up from the airport and delivered at the hotel and of course my wife and I still had yet to start practicing our wedding dance! The night before the wedding we also met at the hotel with some of the guests to have a DIY dinner consisting of potatoe salad, sausages and jiaozi 饺子. This dinner allowed us also to get some dancing practicedone  as my uncle from Sweden used to be a dancer. Not that we practiced alot but at least we learned the basic steps.

Things became even crazier on the wedding day itself. It started very early in the morning, I had to pick up one bridesmaid from Helsinki city center so she could help prepare my wife with hairs, make-up and her dress. My own preparations were a bit less exiting as there is not much to do except to suit up and put the hairs into a less messy state. However there was still much to do at the wedding reception because one of our guests changed plans and would not come, my wife had to invite somebody else and my task was to come up with a new seating arrangement + getting the technic to work for the picture screening. This meant I drove very often between our home and the wedding reception, building up more and more stress as time was running out. I do not know how but in the end we managed to be in time at the church. I believe this included several speeding violations on my behalf.

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Already one year before the wedding we were trying to find the perfect church for us and booked it in advance together with the wedding reception in a manor house near our home (they only had two weekends still free for us at that point, one year before!). Thankfully nothing out of the ordinary happened at the church, not even a crying baby! Our pastor was holding the ceremony in Finnish and in English and in the end we received also a bible in those languages from her.

Once we arrived at the wedding reception it was time for some photo shooting, relaxing in the sun and welcoming all the guests before entering the premises. One of my wife’s bridesmaids was the MC doing everything in English, then another bridesmaid was translating everything into Finnish and one of my groomsmen was translating into German and Chinese, hence we had all needed languages covered. Thanks to the MC there was always something going on which resulted that no one was getting bored. She had prepared a full program for that day and it was planned in a way that it allowed much free time between the sections for the guest to get some rest, mingle and pick up few drinks from our car. We had a lot of games, very good food and a wedding dance which was okay for practicing only 15 min before. The celebrations lasted well into the night and in the end we could get our well-deserved rest in the hotel at the manor house. All in all I can say it was a great day, sure it was exhausting but it went very well and thus was a nice experience.

 

Here are some more pictures from that day. I will still try to find a picture from our invitation cards which we had purchased before from China.

 

 

Crazy Family

Our Son’s Baptism

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Today we drove once again to Hamburg but this time not because of another visit at the Zoo but for our little boy’s baptism. We chose a little church in Hamburg because I was myself baptized in that church nearly 27 years ago. Back in the day my parents decided on that church because it is the Finnish Seamen’s Church and I am myself 1/2 Finn and 1/2 German. Now that our little son was born we thought it was just right that he would be baptized in the very same church as me and besides he is also to part Finnish!

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Nathan really enjoys it

 

The Church

The church was built at Ditmar-Koel-Strasse 6 in 1966, in the same street are also the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish Seamen Churches (sorry if I forgot other churches but I never paid too much attention which other ones are located there).

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Seamen’s church indeed, an anchor and a model of a ship inside!

It is a pretty small church in the corner of few other buildings so some people even miss it passing by. Within is a small coffee shop where you can buy all kinds of Finnish little items and food stuff. I have to add that the prices are not even that high, sure higher than normal food etc in Germany but still mostly cheaper than in Finland itself. One of my favorite parts in the church building is the parrot named Tseki which is probably just a “Finnishnized” version of Jacky. One of the things you don’t expect in your everyday church is most likely the sauna…

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Nathan is still sceptical about his uncle

 

Our day at the church

The main  ceremony at the church started at 11am and the church was packed (okay, it is a really small church and we weren’t more than 30 people in there…). Besides the main church service there were two baptisms on the program, one for a young boy (he had surely a lot of family with him) and one for our little baby. I don’t have much to say about the whole event as it was in my eyes a standard Lutheran (Finnish) church service but for my mother-in-law it was something new as she his herself catholic and besides that only witnessed church services in China. Everything was going on without any issues,  little Nathan slept throughout the whole service and the only sound he managed to produce was a little fart…

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My wife and HER mother-in-law! (hi mom)

After the service was done we left the church and went to the coffee shop in the same building. My parents had a little cold bread table ordered so we had time to relax a bit with coffee/tea, bread, pulla and some muffins. It probably does not sound like a very exciting day but we liked it as we prefer to keep things simple and it was an excellent way to get body and mind away from the ever going on renovation work in our apartment. Besides, it was very nice that everything went so smooth this day as we had some little drama the two weeks prior to the baptism as one of the papers necessary for the process was missing. Not any paper but the BIRTH CERTIFICATE itself vanished somehow so we had to get some certified paper from the Finnish resident registration office asap to Germany which was not as easy as it sounds now but in the end we managed everything just fine and the pastor received all necessary documents couple of days before the deadline.

 

Some information about the Finnish Seamen’s Mission on wiki and the website of the church itself in Finnish language…

 

Crazy Euopean People, Mom in Law

Adventures of my mother in law

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Few days ago my mother in law arrived for her three-month visit. Usually there shouldn’t be much to write about yet as it takes few days until her crazy stuff begins but this time she outdid herself. It already started at the airport here in Finland. I believe she just can’t wait to give me material to write about.

The day started pretty normal except that her flight was suddenly one hour early but this didn’t cause us any sweat as we live only 15-20min away from the airport. We managed to arrive just few minutes after the plane landed so we were in no hurry as it takes some time for the passengers to leave the plane and get their luggage. So we waited in the arrival hall, waited a bit more and waited even longer until we stayed there for over one hour. All the time we saw other Chinese passengers from the same flight passing us by but no sign of mother in law. We called some friends who are working at the airport to check the gate and the luggage claim but they could only tell us that there were no Chinese people left in those places and that the sign for the flight from Chongqing was gone as well from the luggage claim.

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Mother in law with her daughter in the 90’s

What had happened to my beloved mother in law? We knew she boarded the flight as she had sent a message before shutting off her phone in the plane and the Helsinki airport is pretty tiny so there are not really many places for her to hide from us and our friends. We went to the information center and made some calls but still nothing. On the way back to the arrival hall we saw a group of people, a very emotional mother in law in company with a not so happy looking border guard and a smiling translator.

The border guard and the translator told us then what all went from after she had left the plane. Apparently she did not go through the passport control but through the transfer area where she ended up in the middle of the airport again. After she got some advice from other people she found her way finally back to the passport control but there a new dilemma started. Sure she had her passport and flight tickets but they also wanted to see her invitation letter which she received from us so she could even get the visa. After much discussion in some special room for passport and visa problems the border guard told her “If we don’t find your daughter in the arrival hall we have to send you back”, wow, very nice, I wonder how he would feel if his mother is in a foreign country and is suddenly forced to show some papers no one even knew before to have with them at the airport…

Mother in law at our wedding (don't we just look creepy with blurred faces?)
Mother in law at our wedding (don’t we just look creepy with blurred faces?)

All ended well, they found us/ we found them and mother in law was allowed to pick up her luggage and leave the airport to come with us. Now we have a full apartment, the noise level is constantly high that I don’t even dare to concentrate on any kind of task which requires my head and hopefully our baby will be born in one of these days.

 

Now I hope that the next posting will be about our baby to be born or it will be about further adventures of my mom in law.